Running Bear’s June 2025 Coffee Shop

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Google morning,

A cool 54f, calm winds.

Heading up to Willow River to get rid
of old paint and recycling, then lawn mowing, followed by the train shed. Continued ballasting and landscaping yesterday, getting down to the final 20%.

Tom- 256 trees? The layout must be massive.

We had our first Kale from the garden last night up here in the northland. DELICIOUS

Have a great morning !

Dave LASM
That’s in addition to the ones he took home. Total will be 600 + my usual 5% overage. His layout has been being built over the last 5 years in his spare time from his work hours. He thinks he has a 250’ mainline with staging yards on each end. Now he’s retired and his plywood pacific is going to look like parts of Missouri in the early 70’s. His wife who is a very successful artist (water colors) has quit the weekend art festival selling and will help him with the ground cover and hills.

My layout is small and has over 1000 handbuilt trees and maybe 30 purchased. It takes a lot of trees for a layout. Not many puff ball trees left in my area of Wisconsin. IMO trees are easy but they are tedious. Like my weathering I try to be efficient and work in batches. I plan to deliver next week the armatures along with my 2 OPS session partners tagging along we will help him test out his layout.

Right now I’m waiting for 10:40am so I can get my pickup at Michael’s. I need wire for this batch of tree armatures and I also ordered a few fine tip calligraphy pens for doing graffiti. I went cheapest the last batch of graffiti. Now I’m going both middle and highest price. The cheap ones worked great but didn’t last real long. I have some tank cars to add custom graffiti and tags to. Those are due in August
 


My cheap little 19" Greenworks corded lawn mower gave up the ghost this morning. :( It lasted 7.5 years. Not bad for a $100 lawn mower. I'm guessing, I don't remember the original price.

I found the exact same model at Walmart for $124 with free shipping. 😁It will be here Thursday.
 
Good morning all!

Already 80F this morning. Its not supposed to be quite as warm as the last few day. 87F for a high. Supposedly
an afternoon shower, but I'm skeptical. 90s return again tomorrow.

Not sure what's happening today. Probably some light household duties and not much else. A swim this
afternoon is a given.

Have a safe day everyone!
 
Good Morning All. Clear and 75° in the neighborhood. No change in our forecast except maybe some clouds off and on which will keep the high temperatures just in the mid-90's. I'd love to have some of Tom O's rain, even if it means more mowing.

Yesterday's cardiologist visit was good I guess. He reaffirmed that the stress test, EKG, echo and all of the blood work showed nothing wrong. However he is still unable to say what caused the Atrial flutter to begin with. He suggested that it might have been a combination of high BP, dehydration and being overweight. So nothing that I shouldn't be able to control with more medications and some self control. Actually losing some more weight would help with the high BP anyway. While they weren't as low in his office as at home, my BP has been in the normal range ~125/75, but my pulse since being released and on some different medications has been in the 50's. He said not to worry about that until it got into the 40's.
Spent a lot of time after getting home doing gardening related stuff. Picked a few more pounds of Green Beans, half of the 40' row; picked Tomatoes, and trimmed off Onion tops and roots from the Onions that have been curing. Did some more mowing with the new push mower, getting caught up with where I got behind after the old one died. Spent some time unsuccessfully searching for some more wide-mouth pint canning jars for the Green Beans. Many have still got Tomato sauce and Salsa in them from past years. I'll have to use the narrow-mouth ones for the next batch. I have lots of them, including a half dozen that I rescued from the demolished barn yesterday. I know that I have more, but just cannot locate them right now.
Today starts with the dishwasher again, this time it's half full of canning jars being washed (again) for use today and tomorrow. Still have to pick the other half of the Green Bean row and potentially irrigate if the wind is right. And of course, snapping and canning those Green Beans.

No time spent in the train shed yesterday, except to re-stock the beer fridge and remove the days allocation. I miss my townspeople, but the doctor and garden take precedence right now.

Patrick - As you probably already know, those small Okra pods will be large ones almost overnight. My Peppers have been a disaster this year. Jalapenos are the only ones doing well.
Mike - I did roofs for a short period of time in the summer of 1971, in between college semesters. I worked the tar cooker on the ground when that crew was needed, otherwise I ferried shingles up a ladder. I decided that I would get a different job the next summer.
Tom O - That visual regarding the NWS however factitious, is the very reason that they needed some workforce trimming.
Dave in Penn Valley - I listened to Bob Wills just as loudly as I did R&R.

Since they have been in the news lately, I read up on B-2 bombers. Amazing pieces of work. They have a bathroom and sleeping quarters on them too. Nighttime refueling in mid-air takes some well-trained airmen.

Everyone have a terrific Tuesday. I'm looking forward to some stock market gains again today.
 


Good Morning All. Clear and 75° in the neighborhood. No change in our forecast except maybe some clouds off and on which will keep the high temperatures just in the mid-90's. I'd love to have some of Tom O's rain, even if it means more mowing.

Yesterday's cardiologist visit was good I guess. He reaffirmed that the stress test, EKG, echo and all of the blood work showed nothing wrong. However he is still unable to say what caused the Atrial flutter to begin with. He suggested that it might have been a combination of high BP, dehydration and being overweight. So nothing that I shouldn't be able to control with more medications and some self control. Actually losing some more weight would help with the high BP anyway. While they weren't as low in his office as at home, my BP has been in the normal range ~125/75, but my pulse since being released and on some different medications has been in the 50's. He said not to worry about that until it got into the 40's.
Spent a lot of time after getting home doing gardening related stuff. Picked a few more pounds of Green Beans, half of the 40' row; picked Tomatoes, and trimmed off Onion tops and roots from the Onions that have been curing. Did some more mowing with the new push mower, getting caught up with where I got behind after the old one died. Spent some time unsuccessfully searching for some more wide-mouth pint canning jars for the Green Beans. Many have still got Tomato sauce and Salsa in them from past years. I'll have to use the narrow-mouth ones for the next batch. I have lots of them, including a half dozen that I rescued from the demolished barn yesterday. I know that I have more, but just cannot locate them right now.
Today starts with the dishwasher again, this time it's half full of canning jars being washed (again) for use today and tomorrow. Still have to pick the other half of the Green Bean row and potentially irrigate if the wind is right. And of course, snapping and canning those Green Beans.

No time spent in the train shed yesterday, except to re-stock the beer fridge and remove the days allocation. I miss my townspeople, but the doctor and garden take precedence right now.

Patrick - As you probably already know, those small Okra pods will be large ones almost overnight. My Peppers have been a disaster this year. Jalapenos are the only ones doing well.
Mike - I did roofs for a short period of time in the summer of 1971, in between college semesters. I worked the tar cooker on the ground when that crew was needed, otherwise I ferried shingles up a ladder. I decided that I would get a different job the next summer.
Tom O - That visual regarding the NWS however factitious, is the very reason that they needed some workforce trimming.
Dave in Penn Valley - I listened to Bob Wills just as loudly as I did R&R.

Since they have been in the news lately, I read up on B-2 bombers. Amazing pieces of work. They have a bathroom and sleeping quarters on them too. Nighttime refueling in mid-air takes some well-trained airmen.

Everyone have a terrific Tuesday. I'm looking forward to some stock market gains again today.
The stealth B2’s are a gorgeous machine. I laugh about the stealth planes going west and another group going east. They didn’t try to hide the west heading group but were in full stealth mode going with the east bound group. However, when they do mid air refueling the tankers are not stealth tankers and are easily seen on radar.

Congrats though to the men and women who flew the missions and got home safe. I don’t don’t care about the right or wrong about the missions those service members did a great job following orders
 
Good morning gang!

Got up with the wife this morning, had a shower, breakfast and watched the morning news. Currently with a large glass of Pineapple/mango juice (no Vodka yet) wondering what to get onto today. I can walk around fine, but still cannot do any heavy lifting while the sternum heals. Gonna be a few weeks yet before I can crawl over the upper part of the layout to lay more track.

Weather here today? Currently 90°, with a high of 96° expected with a feels like temp of turn the damn A/C on!!!:eek:

Dave, Ocular migraines happen to me too. my Opthamologist says there is nothing wrong with my eyes, that they actually come from the area of your brain where the optic nerve meets the brain. I liken them to a multi colored ribbon floating just slightly off to the side of my field of vision, almost like a ribbon of kaleidoscope colors. Generally they last 15-30 minutes before fading. It's a real P.I.A when they happen at work, I just have to do my best to ignore them and power through.

Louis. I have a Greenworks string trimmer that died after a year and a half. Took it apart and found 1 motor lead had a bad solder joint. A little solder and shrink wrap and it is as good as new!

Tom. Why vacillating? Just do it! BTW I've been thinking a good bit about Duck Duck Go, but I've never known anyone who has it. Currently I'm on Chrome with Adblock Plus, but the ads still get through.🙁

Gonna root through my boxes of kits, see what I can come up with to keep me occupied!

BBL
 
81 here and supposed to get to 90 with possible rain. BBQ last night for our Anniversary dinner, then ice cream at Culver's. LadyC has more shopping planned for today [she has a Master's in Attack Shopping]. My goal for today is to hit Bass Pro and hopefully find some decent seat covers for the Carnival. Y'all be good.
 
Iam interestd in a written tutorial how you do your trees! Because i soon have to try it myself :)
Marco thank you but…

I took my tree building direct from Luke Towan (nka as Ellie) of Boulder Creek Railroad’s YouTube videos. I built them exactly the way he did. She has been transitioning since 2024 which explains the absence of new videos per her comments on the lead page of her Boulder Creek site


A few years later I took some tips from Boomer Diorama but for the most part I keep to the original build videos
 
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Good morning gang!



Tom. Why vacillating? Just do it! BTW I've been thinking a good bit about Duck Duck Go, but I've never known anyone who has it. Currently I'm on Chrome with Adblock Plus, but the ads still get through.🙁



BBL

Hi, a few reasons. The first 2 are just me being me

1. I have been helping 2 operating group members build their new layouts
2. I designed 2 paper mills for 2 other operating group members who are good friends. One should be completed, installed and operating in September. The other should be before Thanksgiving

I will honor those commitments, doing my own would cut into that

3. Most importantly though is, are we going to be in this house 5 years from now? I live by is there a decent return on investment (ROI). It would take a year for framework, track laying, wiring and testing. My last 2 builds got to the testing phase when we switched houses again. Very frustrating but thankfully I had this layout in the lower level of our then corporate offices in a duplex we’ve owned since 2007. When it was built as rentals for college students. It became our business headquarters in 2014 when I retired and we moved to this area

4. I turn 73 in September and it does add a little weight to the decision

I really should do it but…

I have 2 browsers on my IPadPro. The standard Safari that Apple includes and I added DuckDuck Go. I really wanted a bit more privacy but even with Ad Blocker on Safari enough annoying ads were barging through. I use Duck Duck Go for all my forum activities and I cannot remember the last ad I’ve seen.
 
For our introverted forum members:

IMG_3418.jpeg
 


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